


into the woods

by philologer



Category: RWBY
Genre: Backstory, Branwen twins backstory, Gen, fairytale references, misfortune
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 15:54:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28656063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philologer/pseuds/philologer
Summary: Once upon a time there was a house cursed with misfortune.(The making of the Branwen twins.)
Relationships: Qrow Branwen & Raven Branwen
Kudos: 14





	into the woods

Mistral’s lower city. A narrow, irregularly cobbled street; shabby one-story houses, their whitewash paint stained and peeling, scattered haphazardly at odd angles to each other. The air gray and full of rain. The bang of a door, and a man’s voice raised in anger, rising to a scream:

“– a _curse_ on _this whole family!_ ”

A woman’s shrill voice joins in the argument: “This _again?_ Oh, here we go –”

“Don’t you tell me I’m wrong, woman!”

“There’s no such thing as curses, you moron! This isn’t a fairytale!”

For lower Mistral, the house might have been an alright place to live – four years ago. Now the roof leaks, half the lights are blown out, the heating – when it works at all – makes rattling groaning sounds all through the night. Black mold is spreading its way down one wall. They were robbed last year; the front door got kicked off its hinges, and even though they shelled out the money for a halfway decent repair job it still doesn’t hang straight. There wasn’t even anything in the house for the thieves to take.

The man is tall and thin-faced and scuffing his foot angrily across the cracked tiles of the kitchen floor. The woman, worn down and red-eyed, turns away from him, pokes halfheartedly at the broken faucet with a spanner. In the next room the baby starts to wail, and one of the older children shushes it.

“Call it what you want, then,” the man mutters, scowling. “But I’m tellin’ you this _ain’t natural._ No one else on the street’s getting hit like this. There’s somethin’ out to get us!”

“Oh, sure,” the woman sneers, “blame the gods or the nature spirits or some fucking _wizard_. It’s everyone’s fault except _yours_ , is that it?”

The man rounds on her, wild-eyed. “This is _not – my – fault!_ ” he roars.

“Well you’re sure not _helping_ any of it!” the woman snaps back. “Hanging around here ranting and raving and _whining_ while I try to keep everything running on my own! If _you_ could just _find work_ –”

“Don’t you think I’m _trying?_ ” demands the man, and slams his fist into the wall.

The whole house seems to shake. Both of them pull up short, frozen, just their eyes darting wildly round the room: bracing to find out what’s going to break this time. A few flakes of plaster fall from the walls, but nothing worse happens. They breathe again.

Then there’s a terrible crash. The woman lets out a cry of despair.

The front door has fallen off its hinges again. Behind it, in the empty gap of the doorway, clinging together, their eyes wide, stand the twins.

* * *

The twins are five years old, now.

Seems like ever since they were born, the family’s luck has been going downhill.

* * *

There is no wicked stepmother in this story, no usurping uncle, no prophecy of ruin to bring the children home again. But there is misfortune, and the trail of destruction it leaves is very real. Eventually, the woman is convinced to believe in curses.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

One evening when the children are in bed, the man says to the woman, or the woman to the man, _we have not enough food to provide for everyone. We cannot go on like this. Let us take the children into the woods tomorrow and lose them there, and they will not find their way back home._

And the woman says to the man, or the man to the woman, _no, spouse, I will not do that. For the wild beasts of the forest, the Grimm, will soon find them, and they will surely both be slain._

And the one who has hardened their heart first says to the other, _if you do not do this thing, then all our other children will die as well, of the curse that has come upon us, and you will have to watch, and bury them._

The twins are awake to hear their parents argue once again about the curse. They have heard that word before; they know what it means. They huddle together, pressed up against each other – and try not to listen to the words.

There are no shining-white pebbles in this story to mark the children’s way home, either. Not even a trail of breadcrumbs.

* * *

The children stumble through the darkened woods. Hungry, now, and tired. Scratched up by branches and bruised from falls. Reaching where they can for each other’s hands. (The girl knew _something_ was going to happen. She has refused to let go of her brother all day.) Trying not to let the tears start.

Their mom and dad have longer legs. That’s all it is, they tell each other and themselves. Their parents went on ahead of them because they can move faster; they just forgot to turn back and look, to see the twins weren’t right behind them. They’re not far ahead. Just past this next tree, surely, or the next one, or the next –

Some of the shadows twist and writhe in the evening gloom. Do some of them have teeth? Or eyes?

Mommy has a gun, the twins remind themselves. She borrowed it from Mr Tora down the street who they’re supposed to never speak to because he works for someone called the _syndicate_ , but it was okay when it was mommy speaking to him. She showed them the gun before they left the city. So they knew they didn’t have to be scared, outside the city walls.

She’s right up ahead, they tell themselves. Daddy too. Any moment now they’re going to go round a corner between the trees and see their mom and dad standing right there waiting for them.

Any moment.

Any moment now.

* * *

“Whoa, hey,” says the man in the cracked brown leather with the machete. “Fuck me sideways with a rusty chainsword. _Kids?_ Why’re there kids out here?”

“Can they help us move the camp?” says his companion, who is short, hard-eyed, and loaded down with a bundle of tent fittings nearly as tall as they are. “No? Then I don’t give a damn. Keep moving.”

“No, but, uh…” The first speaker trails his hand vaguely through the air, which presumably means something to him, though not to anyone else there. “Kids. Here. Did we _miss_ a village, I thought we cleared all this shit out round here.”

The boy is staring around at them, curious, intent. The man with the machete is beginning to feel unsettled by it, and doesn’t want to admit it. He adjusts his grip on his weapon, fingers tense.

The girl steps in front of her brother and demands of the bandits, “Take us _home!_ ”

Her voice is thin, high-pitched. The bandits laugh. More of them have been gathering there in loose knots, in this little clearing among the twisted trees, wandering through in twos and threes, stopping to see what the hold-up is or why so many of their fellow tribesmembers are collecting there.

“ _Lost,_ ” scoffs the short one carrying the tent poles. “Fucking _townies_. Alright, move it, they’re no use to us, _I’m_ not sticking around here when the Grimm show up for them.”

The girl has more to say. The bandits do not listen. One of the newer arrivals, a woman with avid green eyes and a poorly maintained prosthetic hand, is claiming to know a way to render a couple of small unwanted children _of use_ to the tribe, or at least _of profit_ . The short bandit disbelieves the green-eyed woman’s claims and is deriding her for _thinking she’s hot shit_ with her _fancy Atlesian contacts_. The argument that results has at least three sides; an assortment of previous conflicts between tribesmembers are dredged up in support of it, some of them years old and already stale. Weapons are raised, waved through the air to underscore points.

The little boy huddles behind his sister, his breath coming fast and ragged.

“Take us home _right now,_ ” the little girl shrieks, into the space between two insults, “or we’ll put a curse on you!”

Some of the bandits pause, taken aback. The girl goes on, seizing her moment.

“We will!” she insists. “We can do it! We’re a _curse_.” She grasps for a suitably terrible threat, remembers the front door, their parents’ horrified faces. Stamps her tiny foot. “Take us home right now or your whole house will fall down!”

The bandits blink. And exchange looks with each other. And laugh.

“Alright, nice try,” sneers the man with the machete, bold with bravado now that he feels assured the curse was an empty threat. “Clear out of our way, you little shits. Hey tentfucker, so what _are_ we doin’ with them?”

He circles around the children, though, before he tries anything. Aims his grab at the one he thinks is the weaker twin. The one who has not said a word since the tribe assembled there, about _curses_ or otherwise.

The boy sinks his teeth into the bandit’s hand.

The man yelps, lashes out to tear himself loose – and the energy in the clearing changes. There are mutters and growls, everyone for one moment in accord. An outsider has hurt one of their own, and the tribe will not stand for it. The person with the tent poles cracks their knuckles, preparing for violence. The avid-eyed woman draws a sawn-off shotgun, twirls her fingers through the trigger guard –

“That’s _enough_ ,” says a clear, ringing voice.

* * *

Morrigan Branwen.

Tall and broad, arrayed like a battle-goddess in black and bone-white, the tattoo of a feather tracing its way up one pale cheek. The shadows of her Semblance cluster around her, drawn by the conflict, rustling and shifting like the restless ghosts of carrion-birds. Warily or resentfully, the bandits fall silent.

This tribe is the Branwen tribe. It has answered to that name ever since Morrigan murdered her way into the tribe leader’s position (two duels and a backstabbing, and the careful taming of her one potential rival), and under her control it has gone from strength to strength. Any number of fragile villages that were still clinging onto existence in the wilderness of Anima when she was only a tribesmember herself have now fallen to her hand, and other tribes and gangs of bandits are beginning to learn to steer clear of what she has declared _hers._ She has her mind set next on the destruction of Suisen town, the claiming of the wealth behind its walls – not _yet_ , she thinks, but maybe in a few months’ time, or a year. Morrigan sees herself as a forward thinker.

And the twins have caught her attention.

Ignorant townsfolk might believe in _curses_ , Morrigan thinks to herself, but she herself knows better. What the girl is threatening her tribe with is not a curse but a Semblance. And so young! To have armed themselves already, and with such a _useful_ weapon. Whichever twin does _not_ have their Semblance yet to hand – for this power of untraceable destruction that the girl is boasting of can only belong to _one_ child in reality, for all the pair of them cling together like two faces of one being turned in opposite directions – will surely share the strong will and masses of aura that have empowered the other twin already. She had her doubts about the boy at first, on that score, but he has proven himself well enough.

The girl, now… it would not be entirely accurate to say that Morrigan sees herself in her. Morrigan Branwen has little interest in children and even less empathy. What she does see is _potential._

Most of her ragged band of criminals and rejects have no Semblances. Most of them aren’t even trying to unlock them, because that would take _work._ Few of them could have taken this tribe to where it is today.

Morrigan Branwen wants a legacy.

“Come with me,” says the woman with the feather tattoo, with the glints of metal braided into her long dark wild hair, “and curse my enemies.”

* * *

The children hesitate, of course. They protest. They have a family, waiting for them at home, siblings and parents who _do_ love them really, surely they must –

 _They left you_ , says the bandit leader, towering over them, implacable. Like a scavenger-bird, she senses where there is weakness, swoops in for the kill. _Why would they bring children they loved here, into the woods, where there are Grimm and dangerous beings? Why would they not come back for you?_

 _They did not want you_ , she says, clear and unquestioned. _But I – do._

It is true. The twins have overheard enough conversations they tried not to hear, to know that. They agree, in whispers, in shaking words. They stumble forward, grasping for the offer of hope.

“We,” says Morrigan Branwen, standing tall as a warrior queen, with the bandits of the tribe that bears her name spread to her left and right behind her like ragged wings, “will be your family now.”

She cocks her head to one side and looks them over: her two birds of ill omen. She points.

“I’ll call _you_ Raven,” she says, “and _you_ Qrow.”

“That’s _not my name_ –” says the one who is now Raven hotly, but her brother only nods, numbly, and digs a sharp elbow into his sister’s ribs. Young or not, they will not be the first to be adopted into the tribe, to choose to sever ties with their previous lives. The twins, now, will be Branwen twins.

The prize is won; Morrigan is satisfied. She turns her back on them.

“You can walk to the camp with us,” she says. “Or you can be carried.”

The bandit whose hand the newly-named Qrow bit looms over the pair of them, grinning unpleasantly. His teeth are stained yellow and there is something that might be blood caked underneath his fingernails. He would be _very happy_ to drag them back to camp upside-down by one leg each.

They walk.

  
  


(“Did you know crows are a sign of bad luck?

Old superstition, but it’s how I got my name.”)

**Author's Note:**

> “The tribe raised us”, says Raven Branwen – as a collective, or so it seemed to me. No mention of parents there. This is where my mind went when she said that, because folklore has kind of a _lot_ of stories about child abandonment.
> 
> The third section of this is heavily inspired by the fairytales Hansel and Gretel (Brothers Grimm version https://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm015.html) and Little Thumb (Charles Perrault version https://www.pitt.edu/~dash/perrault08.html). Both of them do the trail of breadcrumbs thing. (A couple of lines from Little Thumb about the youngest son, incidentally: “The poor child bore the blame of everything that went wrong in the house. Guilty or not, he was always held to be at fault. He was, notwithstanding, more cunning and had a far greater share of wisdom than all his brothers put together. And although he spoke little, he listened well.”)  
> The usurping uncle is from the story of Romulus and Remus (among others, but this one involves twins, so). Children abandoned in the woods because of prophecies that came back to bite their parents when they came home anyway are a staple of Greek myth and include Paris son of Priam who started the Trojan War in which his whole city-state was destroyed – so things could have been worse! (:


End file.
